Speciation is an important process that is responsible for the generation of biodiversity on Earth. The importance of gene flow during speciation is hotly debated; however, it can be investigated by studying the process ...

South America and the Andes harbour a rich biodiversity. High levels of in-situ speciation, survival of relict lineages into modern times, and mixing of biotas (Gondwanian and North American), have been demonstrated to ...

The overall objective of this thesis was to understand better the mechanisms that shape the diversity in colour vision of fish, and to explore the adaptive significance of this divergence. Among the vertebrates, teleost ...

Successful preservation of Earth’s biodiversity requires an understanding of the processes that generate new species. The generation of species without gene exchange is considered predominant; however, a growing body of ...

Understanding the environmental, demographic, and evolutionary processes underlying species’ range limits (RLs) is a primary goal of ecology, and increasingly important for conservation in a world of changing species ...

All species have limits to their geographic distributions and many range limits are stable over centuries, indicating a failure to adapt to conditions beyond the range edge. This simple observation contradicts copious ...

Understanding the trade-offs that affect potentially adaptive traits is fundamental to our understanding of evolutionary diversification and speciation. Heterogeneous landscapes may lead to spatial variation in such traits ...

An organism’s entire life history - the timing of development, reproduction, senescence and death - can depend on the nature of selection for reproductive age. The outcome of selection will depend both on the particular ...

The ability of individuals to change breeding time is predicted to be an important aspect of adapting to climate change. Changes in breeding time could occur through either behavioural adjustment of breeding time or ...

Evolution can occur rapidly on timescales of years to decades. In addition to adaptive responses to natural selection, stochastic processes such as gene flow and genetic drift may influence rapid evolution in many species. ...